


Still a Punch in the Gut

by NorroenDyrd



Series: Should Never Have Existed [6]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Family Drama, Found Family, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Lost Love, Non-Canon Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Past Relationship(s), Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-04-16 08:15:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14160576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: A rewrite of Nadia Trevelyan's backstory exposition for an AU where she is not the Herald (and eventual Inquisitor) herself, the Mark having passed on to Magister Alexius after a time travel mishap. Nadia is still Cassandra and Regalyan's long-lost daughter, though, taken away at birth by the Chantry and receiving the name Trevelyan via marriage to her Circle mate Maxwell (who subsequently died). Still very much attracted to The Iron Bull. And still pining for a family - except now she has two parental figures instead of one.





	1. Nadia's Portrait by Ellalavella

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Punch in the Gut](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12777774) by [NorroenDyrd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd). 



> Now illustrated with a gorgeous portrait of Nadia as she appears in this timeline, marked by a scar and all, made by the fantastic elalavella.tumblr.com!
> 
> Split into two parts for reading convenience.


	2. Nadia's Portrait by Ellalavella

'Punch in the gut' might be a clichéd, overused turn of phrase - if Nadia had a coin for every time she encountered it in Varric's books alone, she would have been able to dump a nifty pile of gold on that pretty little Ambassador's table, to cover all the expenses of the Inquisition, past, present, or future. But Maker's flea-bitten beard, does she find this expression easy to relate to! Almost chillingly so.  
  
Punch in the gut was exactly what she felt when her husband died.  
  
Husband... Should she even use that word? Did he even last long enough for 'husband' to carry any weight?  
  
It had not even been two weeks after the hasty, giddy, the-Circles-are-gone-now-and-we-can-do-whatever-we-want whirlwind of a bonding ceremony between two schoolmate sweethearts, officiated by a greasy-looking, heavy-eyed Chantry sister who smelled of mould and stale liquor and looked like she would have wedded a gourd to a pig if someone slipped a silver in her hand and shoved her to the pulpit.  
  
Not even two weeks - and then, Maxwell Trevelyan, the young husband of Nadia Trevelyan, née How In The Void Do I Know I Am A Chantry Orphan, fell to the sword of a wild-eyed, unshaven, panting goon in dented Templar armour.  
  
The bastard just burst without warning into the little cottage they had been staying in, shaking the whole place from foundation to the rafters, frothing at the mouth and yammering something about 'hunting apostates'. And Maxwell got it into his stupid head that he just had to push the half-dressed Nadia behind his back, and to conjure up a fire ball.  
  
He just had to do something after he saw the blood dripping from the 'hunter's blade, and the limp arm of the pot-bellied little old man who had rented the cottage's back room to them, stretching across the floor behind that raving interloper's back.  
  
He just had to lunge himself at that blade, taking initiative in his own hands for once, fighting the goon to the last. He just had to play hero - and whisper ferociously, as he pinned himself on the Templar's sword, that the little old man, who lay like a piteous, discarded potato sack somewhere just beyond the doorway of their room, had not deserved this, and needed to be avenged.  
  
The poor old fellow had taken them in, as they were stumbling about, clueless and hungover on their recent escape from the Circle, and increasingly more terrified of the explosions of magic that scorched the soil round every corner, as apostates clashed with rogue Templars.  
  
Nadia and Maxwell had wanted none of this. None of the fighting and flames and screams. They had wanted a tiny bit of freedom, and shelter from the war, and at least some pretense of having a honeymoon.  
  
And the cottage owner (what was his name even? Hubert? Hilbert? He talked with such a lisp that she cannot be sure) gave them just that. No questions asked, in a simple exchange for a little help around the garden and the chicken coop. And it had proved quite a bit of fun, too, because who knew that magic can be used not only as a lure for demons and a war tool for melting people's faces off, but also as this nifty household support for weeding carrot patches telekinetically and calming fretfully clucking hens...  
  
The Herald... No, not the Herald! He hates it when people call him that, for reasons that he has now confided in Nadia. Even though he has been doing such a fantastic job keeping the people safe and fixing the mess left after this stupid war, he does not think it's right to go under 'Herald of Andraste', when the only reason he got the swirly-whirly anti-Rift thing in the palm of his left hand was because he had been sent on a mission by those crazy Venatori cultists - to make sure that Nadia did not get the thing for herself. Which may have apparently happened... in some alternate future?  
  
This is still far too much to wrap her mind around; feels impossible, like the most contorted visions the spirits heap up in front of you in the Fade. All that Nadia knows for sure is that the hapless Venatori's mission blew up into his face, leaving him green and glowing instead of her.  
  
So yeah. Better call him not Herald, but Uncle Gid... No, 'Uncle Gideon' is the... how does Varric call it again... the alias they use for him sometimes, because most Chantry-schooled people over here won't handle the thought of a Tevinter mage - a former cultist no less! - saving them from demons. He is not Nadia's actual uncle, much as she would... Gah. Her thoughts are leaping all over the place.  
  
Alexius. Just call him Alexius.  
  
So um, Alexius always smiles into his perpetual scarf pile ('Yes, Tethras, I agree with you, the outdoors is insufferably cold - but why are you going about so... exposed? Shall I lend you one of these for your chest?') when Nadia ponders out loud about magical hen-calming and stuff. He accompanies that smile with a sort of wistful look in his eyes, and says that this is how the Late-a-tons do their household chores where he comes from. Or was it Low-a-tins? Well, those folks in Tevinter who are born with magic but do not come from high-class families. The latter have slaves to do everything for them, obviously.  
  
Anyway. Back to that bloody, pointless, damnable thing that happened to her poor stupid Max. And Hubert... Hilbert?  
  
All that the little old man had done when Max and Nadia showed up at his home was cast a long, knowing look at the staves behind their backs and at the road-worn muddy sacks that had once been their Chantry-issued robes. After that, he whispered knowingly that he once had a niece 'of the M-word perwww-shuasion', a 'luv-vely girl, luv-vely girl', and that she had to be on the run now too - so if he did not take them in, surely, the Maker would see that, and send his niece to the door of some house where she would be turned away and pushed out into the cold and rain, right?  
  
But instead, the Maker, if he even exists, decided to send a cut-throat with no room in his half-squashed brain for anything except 'Must. Kill. Apostates'. And before Hilbert - or Hubert - knew it, he was dead. And so was Maxwell.  
  
The Maxwell who had visited the orphanage where Nadia spent her first years, accompanying his parents on charity work - a prim little prince in an embroidered vest, and the subject of a sudden ridiculous crush for a tiny squirt with buck teeth and messy dark-brown hair.  
  
The Maxwell who had become Nadia's fellow apprentice, some years down the road, when his magic awoke and his family suddenly became not so charitable to their own offspring, and carted him off to the nearest Circle, never to speak to him again.  
  
The Maxwell who had had smiled genially at his study mate's clumsy teasing ('Hey, look, Little Mister Velvet Pants is in the same tower as us peasants'), which would suddenly make her tongue-tied with the realization that her crush had not gone anywhere.  
  
The Maxwell who had steadily endured every of Nadia's impatient outbursts during revision sessions, when the magic lore would not quite cram into her head and she felt like punching the stupid book covers.  
  
The Maxwell who had been the first, and only, apprentice to discover that the best way to shut Mouthy Nadia up was to give her a kiss.  
  
The Maxwell who had snogged her behind every bookcase in the Circle library, squeaking every time with fear of being discovered.  
  
The Maxwell who had blushed over the silly notes she would pass to him during every class, risking the wrath of a Templar (because any snatches of paper secretly exchanged by two mages have to be part of some evil demon-summoning ritual, right).  
  
The Maxwell who had had a tiny panic attack when she referred to the stain left on her bed sheets after he'd snuck into her dorm and, surrounded by muffling runes, took her virginity, as 'blood magic'.  
  
The Maxwell who had remained by her side, even as the Circles fell.  
  
The Maxwell who had wondered if this might mean a return to normal life for them, a life he would have had with his parents, had not his magic manifested - a life of raising a family.  
  
Her Maxwell.  
  
Dead.  
  
Because, angered by the needless death of old Hubert (Hilbert?) he had suddenly decided to be the brave one, the bold one, the punch-landing one. And because Nadia had not been quick enough to remind him that this was supposed to be her role in their relationship.  
  
She is not sure if she was truly ever in love with the poor doofus. Probably not. Probably, there is no such thing as love anyway. Not for them. They were never lovers, not in the high-strung, swoony sense of the word. Just two naïve kids who would play together, and then study together, and then sleep together, and then run from the Templars together.  
  
Alexius would probably disagree. He seems to believe that love exists, and that love was what he had with his wife. At least, judging from the scarce bits he shared with Cassandra when it occurred to her that she really did not know all that much about him – which she immediately informed him of.  
  
Not that Nadia was eavesdropping; her and the Seeker's training dummies just happened to be... sort of... nearby.  
  
They were similar to Max and Nadia, on the surface. Alexius and his Livia... Andraste's sainted fanny pack, the way he pronounced her name... like he had been stabbed, and a breath of pain was escaping through his lips; Cassandra even had to rest her hand on his arm, muttering some clumsy words of comfort, and Nadia, on her patch of the training grounds where she was totally not eavesdropping, had to assault her dummy with doubled ferocity.  
  
At some point in their lives, they had also been just a pair of kids. Growing up in a Circle together, noses buried in books till they bumped into one another and had to look up, each of them star-struck by the realization that the other had really pretty eyes. And then, graduating from playful scuffles to gentle hand holding to kisses in shadowy aisles.  
  
But theirs was a Tevinter Circle, nothing like Nadia's; they did not have to run and hide; they were in no rush to make use of every tiniest window of time when the Chantry was not watching.  
  
They got to spend some thirty, forty years together, free to explore the world at their leisure, free to live their life as a settled, happy family, before the darkspawn struck and toppled down all they'd built.  
  
Nadia and Max did not even get two weeks.  
  
Not even two weeks - and then, with no warning, in a flash of fire and steel, there were not a pair kids but just one.  
  
Just one kid, standing over a twisted, sticky, lightning-fried black husk, which had apparently used to be that brainless armoured goon, who glared at her savagely some moments before her palms began to tingle with lightning - while the cottage of the late old Hilbert (Hubert) burned down around her.  
  
A stray spark from her and Max's spells must have hit a curtain or something; and if the little niece of the M-word persuasion was ever going to come for a visit, all she'd find would be a creaky charred carcass of a building over a carpet of ash.  
  
Nadia has always been physically strong - as attested by quite a bunch of dummies that she has decimated on the training grounds at the gates of Haven (including the one that she ripped apart, straw flying in all directions, as she gave herself the task not to listen to what Alexius was saying about losing his wife). Throughout her life, she has enjoyed exercising to harden her muscles, even though back at the Circle she had to do it in secret: that was not encouraged, to put it mildly, as brawny mages are the last thing a Templar wants to deal with.  
  
So, with a little strain of her arms and some telekinesis thrown in, she was able to pull both Max's and Hubert's (Hilbert's) bodies before the crackling, ember-caked roof beams came crashing down.  
  
And it was after she emerged from the acrid, dark smoke swirls, and took a look at Maxwell's damned face, so bloody, heartbreakingly cute, white like a porcelain doll's in the frame of those ridiculous blonde curls he had - it was then that the punch in the gut finally came.  
  
There is no better way to describe that sensation - that painful thrust that knocked all wind out of her and left her so numb and cold, that the colours of her surroundings seemed to grow blurry and desaturated. The remnants of that pain would keep stirring in the pit of her stomach for the longest time, as she held her dead husband's head in her lap, and the flaky cloak of falling ash kept layering over her hunched shoulders.  
  
The punch was more crushing, more powerful, than anything she had ever felt before - and honestly, she has not expected it to return, not after she's taken so many precautions to close herself off behind a wall of careless cynicism that's supposed to be impervious to touchy-feely stuff.  
  
Sure, she does not turn away heartlessly from people in need; she is quite satisfied, in fact, that she has managed to put herself to use, running with the Inquisition and pulling her weight as best she can. Beats cowering in some cave in Witchwood or sitting about on her hands in Redcliffe.  
  
But as soon as a particularly suspicious chunk of mushiness begins to hover on the horizon, she takes care to shrug it off, to scoff in its face, to make it go 'poof!' into nothingness by showing just how far she is from taking it seriously. Like the thing that she has going with the Qunari mercenary - or rather, spy that is supposed to hide under the guise of a mercenary but cannot be arsed to do it - that they recruited on the Storm Coast.  
  
'Every drop of my Tevinter blood is boiling at the thought that we are having an oxman in our midst,' Alexius grumbled into his scarves, as he and Nadia walked along the strip of crunchy white gravel that the waves kept trying to lick as if it were candy. 'But he seemed an... important member of your team in that other timeline... the one that I erased. Important to you personally. And as I have been meddling with your fate enough as it is, I cannot turn him away. At least Leliana will keep watch over him, and read all the letters that he writes to his... kind. She will make a thorough job of it; I would know'.  
  
Well, if by 'personally important' he meant 'very attractive', he was certainly right. Nadia likes being around this enormous grey hunk; likes getting into fights with demons and what have you when he is right behind her; likes measuring his bulging muscles and his long gnarly scars with her gaze. It would be fun if he took her to bed, she thinks: that little Chantry sister from the soup kitchens and the freckled stable boy only have the most flattering things to say about him. The best fun they had in their adult lives, ever since they first started fucking.  
  
And that is all she looks for. Fun. In battle and afterwards. An easy-going friend with serious axe skills, and what promise to be... tremendous benefits. To make it even better, the Qunari do not seem to have the concept of love; they value the reliable companionship of battle comrades, and good, invigorating sex. Which is perfect for Nadia, as it means that Bull will not allow any relationship of his to turn into... more. She cannot have more; because if she treads down that path, it might end in another punch in the gut.  
  
Good thing it won't - not with Bull. And not with Alexius either.  
  
She kind of likes that he messed up in the past (or was it future? they will have to go over this again so she can understand) and is now trying to better himself, using his abilities to kick this burning, melting world back into shape... Or, well, her abilities, according to him; though she has no claim on that weird hissing green thing in his hand. She does not even remember having it - and for all it's worth, Alexius makes a fantastic Herald in her stead.  
  
His eyes bugged out at the comparison... But he rather reminds Nadia of those Templars that she met on the way to the Conclave: the precious few that were not crazed for blood; that did not soak up the fear of their mage prisoners till it drove them into a cackling, lyrium-like high; that actually worked to keep the common folk safe. And she kind of likes that.  
  
She also kind of likes that he knows so much about magic, and is not that unwilling to teach you if you poke him enough. She still gasps a little to herself when she remembers that thing he showed her and the newcomer, Bethany - the Champion of Kirkwall's sister, fresh from the court of that snooty Orlesian lady, where her brother thought 'she'd be safe'. The thing with the quill and parchment sheet, which he'd make float up to a bookshelf, dripping purple sparkles onto the floor, and copy out a passage from a tome he pointed at... That was really impressive, and she can't wait till she learns how to do that all by herself!  
  
And she kind of likes pretending that he is her uncle. The sort of uncle you read about in adventure books, snarky and aloof but caring down; and the reason behind quite a few of the shenanigans the hero gets up to. It's all purely for a laugh, of course. Bull and him - all for a laugh. She had seen to that. She has protected herself from... the punch.  
  
And yet, it has come again. It has squashed her insides again. It has made her out of room to breathe again. And all over some trifle, too!


	3. Part 2

Here's how it happened. Here's how the punch returned. With no warning - and no reason.  
  
Nadia was hanging around by Cassandra's side again - except that this time, rather than whack at dummies out in the snow, they were both inside the Inquisition's makeshift headquarters in the Chantry. Nadia was making a report, quite puffed up with pride - which, drat it, must have made her look quite silly - on how she and a bunch of fighters from the Chargers, Bull's mercenary crew (quite the real deal, despite him being a not-so-undercover spy) had managed to rescue another Tranquil.  
  
The thing with the Tranquil is, the poor fellows' skulls apparently have some kind of... mystical properties that greatly interest Alexius' cult mates, who relentlessly track the wretches down and kill them. Far from a pretty sight if you don't prevent it. A single, searing charge of flame to turn the human flesh to dry, smoking black ash that trickles off the bones into a mound of fine dust on the ground, while the carcass still remains standing for a moment or two, before collapsing with a lot of clicking and chattering, the coveted skull rolling through the grass to the caster's feet. So that all they need to do is shift their foot slightly, and stop the skull as if it were a ball in a children's game, the sole of a fancy embroidered black boot pressing into the crown of the head that had once belonged to a person. A poor, miserable mage that failed at the Harrowing or got tired of having nightmares or - as the terrible truth was in certain Circles - simply looked at a Templar the wrong way.  
  
A horrid, unfair way to die. A fate that no-one deserves - not even the waxen-faced husk you turn into if they make you Tranquil. But now, Alexius has tipped the Inquisition off about the Venatori's skull scheme, still weak and feverish from the wounds clawed into him by a demon at the Breach, but very insistent that they hear him out. It might well be a matter of personal principle for him - maybe... if Nadia is getting it right... maybe in that other timeline, where she was the Herald and he was still a Venatori, plotting against her, he took part in the hunt as well. Good thing their fates have changed, then!  
  
Knowing what to expect, the Inquisition forces are working far and wide to intercept the Tranquil that have not found a place to stay, and - chopping up any encroaching cultists if necessary - direct them to the safety of either the Inquisition camp in Haven or the Redcliffe village, where Grand Enchanter Fiona and her rebels have taken refuge. Whichever happens to be closer.  
  
Alexius always seems to stiffen when the choice falls on the latter, but then shakes the tension off, like a big grouchy bird taking a dust bath, and mutters cryptically under his breath, 'I am not there, so they should remain unharmed'.  
  
And before Nadia's talk with Cassandra, she and the Chargers had, yet again, turned a couple of cone-hooded Tevinters into limp, bloodied punching bags, and shepherded the poor branded girl that the cultists had been circling, like wolves sizing up an ewe, up the road towards the Redcliffe sign. Mission accomplished.  
  
Nadia was just getting to the juiciest details, about how Rocky the dwarf suggested that they throw a tiny grenade down one of the hooded men's codpiece (the tiniest grenade, to match the piece's contents) - when Alexius joined her and Cassandra, grey-faced and shaking as if he had gulped down more lyrium than was healthy.  
  
'Any news?' he asked sharply, gripping at the staff he was using as an aid to hasten his pace. 'Have your agents contacted my son?'  
  
He has approached both Cassandra, and Josephine the Ambassador, and the icy-eyed Spymaster with this same question many, many times now. Where is his son? Where is Felix? His beloved boy, whom he has left behind in Tevinter, and whom the spy lady promised to locate and bring south as a reward for daddy dearest being such a good Rift-closer (ouch, that sounded a bit bitter; but Nadia cannot help but feel this splash of something acid-like scorching her innards whenever Alexius shows concern for his child).  
  
Well, be it as it may, that little scene was nothing new - at first. Alexius had bugged the Inquisition advisors before, and each negative answer had appeared to add more lines to his face - deep, shadowy lines that spelled out nothing good. And now, as it seemed, he could not bear getting such an answer any further.  
  
The echo of Cassandra's 'No, I am afraid there has still been no sighting of any Felix Alexius' was still hanging in the air, when the old man speared the threadbare rug on the floor with the tip of his staff, applying so much force to the poor wooden thing that he nearly left it splintered.    
  
His other hand, in the meanwhile, twisted into a gnarled, frozen claw, as if he was having some kind of seizure; its veins darkened to a stark purple colour that then grew brighter and brighter till it hurt Nadia's eyes to look.  
  
'You are not trying enough!' he barked, the same vibrantly purple glow slashing across his needlepoint pupils. 'How hard can it be to reach out to one man... one man who is too sick to be cavorting across country, to places where he can't be found?!'  
  
He swallowed, the flood of emotion overflowing into his Mark - which happened to be in the hand where he held his staff, forcing him to curse and throw it aside, as his sore, magic-eaten skin rubbed against the wood.  
  
Nadia has noticed that he favours no hand in particular when wielding his mage weaponry, though he usually holds writing tools and such in his right hand... Not that she has been... stalking him or anything! And... And Cassandra has noticed that too; even complimented him on it!  
  
'You are a very dexterous fighter,' she said at one point, when their team had just cleared out some bandit camp or other - straining very hard to make a grimace that would hide her admiration. 'That is... advantageous'.  
  
Nadia also remembers Alexius smirking in response to that - but that exchange had happened a while before the scene at the Chantry. Where, of course, Alexius was far from being in a smirking mood.  
  
'Have I not been useful to you; have I not been doing everything I can to make up for... what has been done?' he said demandingly, his voice breaking somewhere in the middle of the sentence. 'Have I not earned the right to this one... easy... thing?!'  
  
'To my knowledge, we have been sending messages to Tevinter,' Cassandra replied cautiously, while frowning first at the staff on the floor, and then at the green and purple magic that oozed from Alexius' convulsing fingers. Her own hand was on her sword hilt, ready to bring the weapon out of its sheath at any moment.  
  
'There just has not been any reply yet. Perhaps...'  
  
'Perhaps what?!' he spat, jerking his lightning-veined hand sideways to that a bolt of magic hit a wall - released when his voice reached its highest pitch.  
  
'Perhaps what?! What are you hinting at? Is he dead? Is that it? Felix has succumbed to the Blight - because I was not there, because I abandoned him! - and you are refusing to tell me?! Why? Because you are afraid that I will lose motivation to serve your Inquisition with my child gone?'  
  
'Do not put words in my mouth!' Cassandra exploded, her patience shattering. 'There has been no confirmation of your son's death! And we - I - would never deceive you like this! You are letting paranoia take command of you! I suggest that you...'  
  
Her breath caught in her throat, and she clutched tighter at her sword hilt, a strip of flaring steel showing over the sheath.  
  
'Back away before we both do something we'll regret!'  
  
'I am going to see to that, Cassandra,' a melodious, dangerously calm voice said from behind the Seeker's back, making a deathly chill pour through every inch of Nadia's spine (and Nadia had already been watching the whole spat like a bloody ice sculpture).  
  
Spymaster Leliana had emerged from one of the side doors - and with her, two guards. Who instantly took a broad stride towards Alexius, wringing his hands behind his back, at the mere snap of the Spymaster's fingers.  
  
'You may be efficient at closing Rifts, and the people may refer to you as the Herald of Andraste,' Leliana said, articulating every word as if she was stamping metal, after she approached the subdued Alexius - who was not revealing any intention to break away from the guards, having lowered his shoulders submissively and extinguished his lightning magic.  
  
Nadia recalls him having this utterly crushed look in his sunken eyes; his magical outburst must have drained him, the way punching a wall in helpless anger would have drained her.  
  
'...But we in the Inner Circle know who you are,' Leliana went on. 'A Tevinter cultist trying to earn back our good faith. And throwing lightning bolts is hardly a way to do that'.  
  
She looked like she had more to say, much more - but then her gaze met Alexius', and something flickered in her eyes, while her eyebrows arched, ever so slightly, adding a hint of rather uncanny softness to her expression.  
  
'I think I will have you transferred to a regular cell,' she concluded. 'Without the distraction of books and soft chairs, you will have plenty of opportunity to reflect on what you've done'.  
  
At that point, Nadia almost broke her stupor and cried out, like an outraged little kid,  
  
'No fair! He didn't even hurt anyone!'  
  
But that would have probably meant that she would have to stay awake at night from then on, waiting for what her new chum Sera calls a 'shifty knife-dark'.  
  
Cassandra, though, was above getting knifed, as Leliana's former comrade in service of the Divine. So she did not hold herself back, and, as the guards took Alexius away, voiced almost the exact same thing Nadia was thinking.  
  
'Are you not too harsh on him, Leliana? I thought you always believed that mages do not deserve to be locked up for any misstep'.  
  
The Spymaster cocked an eyebrow.  
  
'He is not just a mage. He is an enemy turncoat. I would have taken the same precautions if he had bared a dagger instead. But you, Cassandra... You are quick to defend him. One moment, you reach for your blade - and the next, you are sympathetic? That is rather un-Seeker-like, no?'  
  
Leliana crossed her arms on her chest, and, after one glance at her stance, Nadia suddenly felt an overwhelming need to backtrack into an alcove by the main aisle's side, where open books were laid out on a squat wooden table, and to pretend that she was immensely interested in some long-winded passage on the Fade.  
  
Hardly had she retreated into the background, when she heard Cassandra clear her throat.  
  
'I just... I know who he is, and if he decides to revert to his old ways, I shall be the first to strike him down... But... When he frets over his son, I can't help but think that I would have done the same in his shoes. I...'  
  
She made one of her customary disgusted noises.  
  
'It's probably for the best, what happened twenty years ago. If they had lived, they would have been taken by the Chantry, and I would have been... unable to focus on serving the Most Holy. Always thinking of them, wherever they were... and...'  
  
A second noise followed, as Cassandra failed to last through her own chain of thought.  
  
In her alcove, Nadia froze again, holding on to the edge of the table so tightly that you might have thought the Chantry was filling up with water and if she let go, she would drown in an instant.  
  
'Yes, Justinia told me,' Leliana sighed, the ice in her tone melting again. 'I am sorry'.  
  
'You needn't be,' Cassandra retorted abrasively. 'It was no great tragedy. I was young, inexperienced, jumped into... womanhood with no second thought, foolishly told myself I could handle being a mother, and then... lost the baby before I even learned if it... if they were a boy or a girl. Not my first loss, nor the most painful'.  
  
'But you still think of them,' Leliana's voice was so soft now, so gentle, that she sounded like a much younger woman. Nadia could not see her from where she stood - nor would she be able to if Leliana was in her field of view, what with those blasted spots inexplicably appearing before her eyes.  
  
'You still wonder...'  
  
'Only of late,' Cassandra confessed. 'I suppose it is just one thing leading to another... First, I learned that... that Galyan was among those who died at the Conclave; then, there is the Herald and his missing son... And the Trevelyan girl looking up to me like a child to a mother... Ugh. I will overcome this. Like I did the first time. I have more pressing matters to concern myself with than think back to... how the child died'.  
  
The child died.  
  
These short, brisk words have somehow had the same effect on Nadia as stroking the icy skin of her silly, hapless Maxwell. They somehow made her sway forward in pain, almost crushing the table under her weight. They somehow made a groan escape through the cage of her grinding teeth - so filled with agony that even a passing Tranquil noticed that and asked, in a monotone but very polite voice, if she was unwell.  
  
'It's nothing,' Nadia grunted, before straightening up and sauntering out of the Chantry, fists clenched. 'It will pass'.  
  
It really is nothing. It should be nothing!  
  
It's startling, of course, for such a detail of Cassandra's past to randomly come into light; and it's sad, too, that the baby didn't live... But at the end of the day, it's none of Nadia's business, and she shouldn't be taking it so personally.  
  
So what if when she was a skinny, scabby-kneed Chantry ward, named Nadia, Nobody, by one of the Sisters as a cruel joke, she would sometimes stay awake well into the small hours of the morning, plastered over her narrow, stuffy-smelling bunk and watching the shadows on the ceiling and imagining that it was her own little self, fighting dragons and demons and other monsters side by side with a brave and beautiful grown-up, the mother that she never knew. While a bunch of other relatives - a father, an uncle, a sibling or half a dozen, and Andraste knows who else - cheered them on.  
  
So what if it hurt less to pretend that her mother had to give her up not because she did not want her, like the Sisters kept saying (that had even been their final parting message as they sent Nadia to the Circle), but because she must have been needed on some super-amazing heroic quest, from which she and the rest of the family would return one day, when Nadia was old enough, and, after a little break for the family to get to know each other, take her away with her, as her faithful squire and apprentice, and smile with pride when Nadia killed her first foul beastie.  
  
So what if these sappy fantasies might have been part of the reason why, already as a Circle mage, Nadia revelled in her clandestine physical training sessions so much - even though by then, she would tell herself she'd stopped believing that she ought to hone her body into that of a mighty warrior to impress some fairy-tale character she imagined her mother to be.  
  
And so what if it all stirred inside of her again, during a mission on the shore of Lake Luthias, when she and Cassandra were struggling with a stubborn tent, and Nadia chanced to glance at their reflections in the water, side by side - and was struck by how similar the outlines of her mouth and cheekbones looked to the grouchy Chantry warrior's.  
  
So what.  
  
So bloody what.  
  
None of this was ever supposed to be serious. She is not a starry-eyed child any longer; she never fully bought into this wild idea that she might be Cassandra's long-lost daughter. She may have... messed around with it, just for fun - like she messes around with the idea that, if she starts sleeping with Bull, he might warm up to her, making their budding friendship... special. Or if Alexius does meet his son again, he will not switch all his attention to him (like it is bound to happen) but will remember Nadia too, her and Felix turning into foster cousins of sort.  
  
She never actually believed it, not for a second. It shouldn't matter that much; it shouldn't hurt that much.  
  
Then why does it?  
  
Why has it been such a punch in the gut?


End file.
